


No Darkness Without Light, No Hope Without Despair

by despairmeguca (obsess97)



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 05:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13920789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsess97/pseuds/despairmeguca
Summary: She's out buying groceries when she feels it. The inexplicable feeling that something is very, very wrong. Something she hasn't really felt in a long time, since the world began to spin again.Never one to doubt her instincts, but also staying calm enough to rationalize her feelings, she decides to call the people she cares about, just to make sure everything is alright. Of course, she starts with Naegi.He doesn't answer.





	No Darkness Without Light, No Hope Without Despair

**Author's Note:**

> I project my feelings onto fictional characters and they suffer bc of it oops

_He's been fading for a while,_ Kirigiri thinks as she looks at her partner. Every day, Naegi seems to have a little less energy, the light of hope in his eyes slightly dimmer than it was the day before. It also seemed that she was the only one who noticed. None of the others could detect a difference from the Naegi they'd known since the Mutual Killing, and she could hardly blame them. The changes were so subtle that if they hadn't been as close as they were, she thinks that even she wouldn't have noticed.

He never brings it up though. He never says anything, or even as much as alludes to what's going on in his head. He acts like his usual self, beaming at anyone who so much as looks at him and encouraging people to do their best to restore hope to the world. But in the split second between his smile fading and his more serious, determined expression returning, Kirigiri always saw a kind of exhaustion on his face, in his eyes. And it was worrying, to say the least.

She supposes that it's in part from misplaced guilt. The boy still carries the weight of all the deaths from their time at Hope's Peak, and when the Mutual Killing began in the Neo World Program, none of them were as distressed about it as Naegi. _I never expected this to be a perfect solution,_ he'd said to Hinata, and Kirigiri can't help but internally shudder at the thought of Naegi thinking so far ahead as to install an emergency shutdown procedure only to have Junko Enoshima come back from the goddamn dead to throw his efforts back in his face.

He's incredible, she thinks, to keep rising up from whatever despair Enoshima manages to throw at him and keep fighting it. Most people would have given up ages ago, but he manages to get up over and over, supporting not only himself but all of his friends along the way. That certainly explains the tiredness she sees in his eyes, but there's something more to it that still makes her feel on edge. It's the same nervousness she felt all throughout their fifth class trial, that something just wasn't adding up and if she didn't act, something terrible was going to happen.

She tells herself that that's just ridiculous, because by all fact driven logic, everything is actually going well. The kids who had died inside the simulation were beginning to wake up, thanks to the efforts of Alter Ego and the AI Chiaki Nanami. With Komaru and Fukawa's defeat of the children in Towa City, the large scale despair-inducing incidents have seemingly stopped. Things are relatively peaceful, the Foundation says cautiously, but we still have work to do. We can't let our guard down now. The six survivors could not agree more, and so they keep working to bring the world back from its own wreckage.

But as time goes on and things only seem to be looking up, even the Foundation admits that most of the hard work is done. They keep it going, to maintain a semblance of peace and stability in case something happens, and every member of the Foundation does remain a member. But their efforts have slowed down because there aren't as many things that need to be saved now. People are starting to try and rebuild their own worlds for themselves. Little by little the general population stops being afraid of each other. Parents cautiously let their children play outside. Teachers find each other and start up new schools, hoping to inspire the new generations. There seems to be an unspoken agreement among the adults of the world that raising their children to not succumb to despair is of the utmost importance.

Togami is the first of the six to take up a side occupation that doesn't directly involve the Foundation. Using resources from god knows where, he manages to procure an independent police force that exists to help protect the general population. It has a double purpose, he claims, because it's also one of many steps he plans to take to restore the Togami Conglomerate. Asahina, Hagakure, and Fukawa eventually decide that they're going to try and lead "normal" lifestyles again, save for the couple of days a week that they come into the Foundation's main office and help out with whatever's going on. Fukawa takes back to writing with a passion that she claims she hasn't felt in years, Asahina opens up a bakery and teaches kids how to swim on the weekends, and even Hagakure opens up a shop that deals in spiritual advice, which is something a lot of people want back in their lives now that the threat of despair isn't hovering over their heads.

Hope is coming back, Kirigiri thinks, and allows herself to relax. Just a little. And maybe a little more when she spots Naegi starting to smile like a weight is being lifted off his shoulders, even though she knows that there's still something wrong.

She trusts him, though. Naegi will eventually tell her what's been on his mind, and she will help him the way he's helped her. That much, she certainly owes him.

* * *

She's out buying groceries when she feels it. The inexplicable feeling that something is very, very wrong. Something she hasn't really felt in a long time, since the world began to spin again. 

Never one to doubt her instincts, but also staying calm enough to rationalize her feelings, she decides to call the people she cares about, just to make sure everything is alright. Of course, she starts with Naegi.

He doesn't answer.

In fact, it doesn't even ring. It goes directly to voicemail. She knows for a fact that he charges his phone every night, she watched him plug it in last night, so he must have switched it off. But he said that he was taking the day off so he should be at home, why would he-

A trillion little things add up at once, the neurons connecting in her brain like wildfire: he was fading when there was despair his eyes stopped lighting up but he didn't say anything and it was like he only ever spoke when someone needed to be cheered up or supported but otherwise he would let himself fade into the background and he started to smile more when there was hope but it was wrong, _he_ was wrong because it wasn't the bright and hopeful smile of the boy she loved it was a smile of resignation and tiredness and defeat-

She's already dialing Togami as she sprints to her car, because the signs were all there and god how could she have missed this, what kind of a detective was she?

Togami says at first that what she's saying is the worst kind of joke, but then her voice cracks as she asks him if he'd heard from Naegi that day and she hears his sharp intake of breath because she has never shown this kind of emotion to him and he knows that this isn't a joke now. His own voice takes on a tinge of nervousness as he says that he's going to check with the others to see if they've heard from him, and Kirigiri doesn't realize until he hangs up that she doesn't want to be alone right now because she is nothing short of terrified. 

She remembers how his hands lingered on her when he hugged her this morning, as if he was trying to hold on to her for just a little bit longer, and she thinks she's going to be sick.

Even through her fear, she manages to get to their shared apartment and sprint up the stairs to the bedroom in one piece, praying the whole time to a god she stopped believing in far before the Mutual Killing incident. She takes a microsecond to calm herself before she bursts into the room, and-

The door is locked. She can't get in. Naegi locked the door.

Naegi never locks the door.

Whatever calm she had managed to scrape together evaporates as she tries in vain to open it, his name falling out of her mouth over and over again in complete panic. The raw fear tearing through her is turning her blood to ice, and Kirigiri thinks that no physical pain in the world can ever compare to what she's feeling right now.

She almost tries to break the door down, even knowing that she doesn't have the physical strength to do so, but something in her peripheral vision catches her eye, and she stops short.

A single, folded sheet of paper, lying on a coffee table near the door. Impossible to miss if you were just walking in, unless of course you were otherwise occupied, as she had been. On top of the paper was a key.

She wastes no time in grabbing the key (and trying very, very hard to not think about the neatly written To Kirigiri Kyouko-san on top of the sheet) and all but shoves it into the keyhole of the door in her haste to get to him, to see him alive and unharmed, maybe reading or listening to music and he'll look up in surprise, beam at her and say Oh, you're home early today!

The door finally opens.

Everything stops, for one long moment. She stops breathing, stops moving. Her heart skips a beat. Her emotions come to a sudden halt. 

It’s very cold.

And then she feels like she's falling.

Because lying on their bed is a softly smiling Makoto Naegi, and she could very easily think he was asleep if not for the empty bottle of pills lying by his side.

He doesn't look tired anymore.

* * *

To Kirigiri Kyouko-san: 

Wow, I never really thought that I would actually go through with this. I guess I always assumed that I'd need to be around for longer. But I guess that the fact that I'm not needed anymore means that we've all just done a really good job, huh?

See, all my life, I've been spectacularly average. You already know that. I only got into Hope's Peak because of luck. What kind of an ability is that? It's true that at some point, I was deserving of the title Super High School Level Hope. My optimism got me that far, and for that brief period of time, it was right. 

But that kind of optimism isn't really needed anymore. I mean, you said it yourself: Hope is coming back, the world is starting to move again. And so I don't really have a purpose anymore.

I'm not complaining, though! I'm happy that I was able to serve a purpose and be useful at all, really! It's just that now that I'm not useful for anything, I can't really find it in myself to keep going.

The truth is, I've been tired for awhile now. Everything is just exhausting, and no matter how much I sleep, I can't shake the feeling. I could fight that when I was needed, but now that I'm not, I can't seem to find the strength to do that anymore.

Kyouko, I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you. The others, too; I only ever wanted to help them. And I'm glad, because I did that and I saw it through to the end. Everything will be okay now, I can say that for certain, because the world is moving forward again; you're all moving forward again. And so I think now is a good time for me to leave. 

After all, optimism was my one redeeming quality. And now that I'm losing it, I feel like I don't really have a right to be here anymore, if that makes sense. 

Maybe I'm not properly conveying myself, but this is how I feel. 

The logical part of my brain is telling me I'm experiencing survivor's guilt, but shouldn't I feel that? Some people might say that I shouldn't think like this because I'm a survivor, not just of Enoshima's game but of everything that came afterwards. But if I only survived because of luck, can you really say I deserve to be alive right now?

I'm not an idiot, though. I know that you're probably going to hate me for this, for not saying anything to you and selfishly acting on my own. And I'm not going to try and say it's not selfish of me, because it is. What I'm about to do is only for my benefit; it will hurt most of the people around me. 

But I've thought this through, dozens of times, and no matter how far in the future I project myself I can only see it ending this way. 

Isn't it better to do something unpleasant sooner rather than later, so there's more time for the people involved to move on?

There's just one last thing I want to say. I love you, Kyouko. I've said it before, I'll say it again, and I'll hang on to that thought until my last breath. You kept me going when I couldn't keep myself going, and I can only hope I've done the same for you. Please never give up, never give in to despair.

I'm sorry. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm debating writing a follow chapter where he lives so if anyone wants to see that leave a comment or something?


End file.
